Customers, such as household consumers and business operators, typically have certain resources (e.g., goods or services) that they purchase on a routine basis. A household consumer may purchase dog food or toilet paper on a routine basis while a business operator may purchase paper or a printer toner on a routine basis. Sometimes it is difficult for the customer to time his next purchase to replenish the resource so that the customer is not left without the resource. For example, if the household consumer runs out of the dog food, the consumer may have to run to a supermarket to purchase another bag of dog food in time to feed the dog. In some instances, the purchase cannot be done at the last minute and the customer is left without the resource when the customer needs it most.
Additionally, not only can running out be a problem, but many of these resources can have retail purchase stigmas when bought at traditional supermarkets or drugstores. A recent study has shown that household consumers find tampons to be the number two most embarrassing resource to purchase. The retail purchase stigma may be decreased by conducting an on-line purchase. For example, the household consumer may go on-line to a website of a vendor (e.g., merchant, retailer, or manufacturer), put the tampons in an electronic shopping cart, and use the vendor's electronic check-out process to purchase the item. The vendor may then ship the tampons to the household consumer's address provided during the on-line purchase. Here, however, the household consumer must manually go on-line each time to make another purchase of the tampons.
Accordingly, it would be an advance in the art of commerce to provide solutions for convenient and efficient repetitive purchases of resources.